DRUGS AND PROSTITUTION: WOMEN SOLD FOR 6000 EUROS

(AGI) - Cagliari, 16 May - Girls arrive from the East and end up in
Gallura working as prostitutes by night and in private homes in
Olbia, reduced to slavery, and sold on like objects by one criminal
organisation to another.

Forensic police and police from the anticrime unit in Nuoro, who have
cracked an Italo-Albanian organisation occupied in drug trafficking
and prostitution between Sardinia, The Netherlands Albania and other
regions in Italy, have recorded an instance of the sale and purchase
of a Romanian girl.

'Bought' for 6,000 euros in her own country having been used as a
sex toy in Sardinia, she was sold on at a discount of 3,000 euros to
other human trafficking marketers. The police investigation, that
began two years ago, has led to the identification of 38 people, 33
of whom were taken into custody as a result of orders issued by the
preliminary investigating magistrate in Cagliary on the request of
the antimafia section.

A further five people were out under house arrest. Not all those
subject to custodial orders were tracked down, in particular,
Albanians living abroad. In Sardinia 17 people were arrested on
charges of international drug trafficking, human trafficking,
slavery, the finding and sale of slaves, operating and living off the
proceeds of prostitution. The leader of the organisation is one Fredi
Keci, a 31 year old Albanian, living in Olbia. With established
relations with the criminal world in his home country and with
business partners spread across Gallura, Puglia, Lombardy, Lazio,
Abruzzo and Marche.

Contacts on the mainland were Lulzim Feini, 32, a courier who went as
far as hiding drugs in a baby's nappy in order to avoid being caught,
and Jlir Plaku, 42. In Gallura Keci had set up an independent group
that distributes imported drugs and also worked in prostitution.
Albanians Leiton Keci, 23, and Thomarak Ledion, 27 took part in it,
as well as the Sardinian Patrick Carta, born in Ireland as the son of
a diplomat, but resident in Tempio. (AGI) -

This is message is forwarded to you by the:

Initiative Against Sexual Trafficking
c/o The Salvation Army USA
National Headquarters